leninade

leninade
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

Grover is by far the funkiest.

Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.

Jalapeno infused tequila

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a confession to make.

I like chili peppers.

I'm not one of these crazy people on a mad quest for ever more insane levels of heat in their spicy pepper dishes, but I enjoy a little burn. But more than just the heat, peppers are such a great sensory experience. They add complex flavors to dishes. They're beautiful to look at. I love the smell when one cuts into a fresh jalapeno. I love the assortment of colors in the pepper section of your local grocer.

I previously posted about trying chili beer at the great American Beer Fest in Denver. I was reluctant to try it, but it turned out that I really enjoyed it. Not an everyday beer, by any means, but so very delicious.

Well, I've had a similar reluctance to try any spicy or chili-infused liquors or cocktails. A bloody mary sounds disgusting to me, but mostly because of the tomato juice. I know Absolut makes a chili pepper flavored vodka called Absolut Peppar, but that also sounds nasty to me. And really, I don't do that much drinking anyway, so when I do drink I prefer my old standby, a Dark and Stormy. Or maybe a caipirinha. Anything from the mint/lime/ginger/rum/etc family.

But the other night I found myself at Poquito's in Seattle. The drink menu had something called a Jala-pina. If my memory serves me, it had jalapeno-infused tequilla, pineapple juice, and a lime squeeze. It was delicious. The jalapeno notes are just a bit spicy, but it's more about the flavors. The spicy notes of jalapeno go so well with the sweet pineapple. Actually, now that I think about it, a good pineapple-jalapeno salsa is one of my favorite things, too. Anyway, I could have downed these Jala-pinas endlessly, but restricted myself to just two.

A few days later I was at a big nerdy gaming event in Everett. The drink menu had something called a "Lord of the Pit", composed of whiskey, bitters, Thai chili-infused simple syrup, grenadine, and soda water. My friend V ordered one and I liked it so much I had to order one of my own.

Now I'm on a chili cocktail kick. I just purchased some fresh jalapenos and some Patron Silver so I can make my own jalapeno-infused tequila. I went with Silver because it has a cleaner, simpler flavor that I'm hoping will allow the jalapeno to shine through. It might be worth trying with a more oaky tequila to see how the flavors interact, but for my first try I wanted something simpler.

I plan to start the infusion tonight. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Endcap of awesome

Endcap of awesome
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

So I was walking through Barnes and Noble the other day and stumbled on this endcap. Now, I was a bit surprised. I know that both "Calvin and Hobbes" and "The Far Side" are the best comics ever, but they've both been done with their runs for, what, more than a decade? According to wikipedia they both ended their runs in 1995, though at opposite ends of the year. So I was wondering if these titles were featured on an endcap because they're still selling really well, despite ending their runs 15 years ago, or if someone who works there is simply a fan of the good stuff? Either way, it was nice to see them displayed so prominently.

Why Surveying is Important

Oops.

Surveying mistakes are rare, and rarely so visible.  Here a mistake of inches caused a ramp-in-progress to be torn down and the contractors to have to start over. 

I hope they have one called Vault 13

A Futuristic Bunker Meant To Survive The Future : NPR

The hardest working man in show business.

James Brown Did Not Continue His World Tour | TMZ.com

Zombie James Brown would still be the funkiest thing in the world. At least, I'd pay money to go see the undead godfather of soul, and hear classics like "Say it loud, I'm a zombie and I'm proud", "I got your brains (I feel good), and "Get up (I feel like being) a brain-eating machine".

Signs I've been out of Colorado too long.

Jambiani, Zanzibar, Tanzania
Originally uploaded by neiljs.

The level of Vitamin D in my blood tested really low. Gotta get back to the sweet mountain sunshine and make me some vitamin D. The air is just brighter there, I swear.

That, or go to Zanzibar for a couple weeks and soak up that spice island sunshine.

Good thing I already have a ticket to Zanzibar. Leaving in three days. Holy eff. Three days!!!

Lego Magazine ad from the year 1981.

Lego Magazine ad from the year 1981.
Originally uploaded by Moose Greebles.

A post on Slate's Double-X blog led me to this. Compare this ad, ostensibly targeted at girls (or their parents), to how lego tries to appeal to girls now: http://belville.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx

Toys are even more gender segregated now than they were 30 years ago.

beardhead

beardhead
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

Check out my new beardhead from beardhead.com. I got "The Pirate", obviously.

Pet AT-AT

AT-AT (Walkies)
Originally uploaded by NickIsConfused.

A flickr user posted a set of pictures showing his pet AT-AT. Pure genius.

Flickr stats

Origami animals
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

One of the neat things about Flickr is that you can view all kinds of statistics on your photos. It'll show you which specific photos are getting the most views and what search terms people are using to find your photos.

Well, the one photo I have that is consistently getting the most hits is this one, a shot of some basic origami animals I made along with T and some other friends. It was a neat little origami pack we found at McGuckin's, with several copies of these three designs and instructions on how to fold them. It was a fun diversion for an afternoon, and a decent introduction to Origami.

Strangely enough, the search term people are using to find my photo is "origami animals".

Kinder Surprise - Disturbing 80s advert

I love these little chocolate eggs with surprisingly clever toys inside. My family was addicted to them for a while, too, when they were available at a local import shop near my parent's house. I'm not sure, but I think I first encountered them while living in Budapest, where we all started calling them Kinder Eggs and the name stuck, instead of their actual name "Kinder Surprise".

But now I'll never look at them the same way again after seeing this creepy commercial.

ennui

I only recently learned the correct pronunciation of this word. It's one of those words that you run across in writing enough that you can figure out what it means from context, and you kind of come up with your own way to say it in your head, and maybe you heard it spoken before, too, but the spoken pronunciation was so different than the one you made up in your head that you didn't file it under the same word in that vocabulary file in your head. Other words in this category for me would be things like "hegemony" and "basalt". Is it buh-SALT? BAY-salt? Hmm, Merriam Webster says either is valid, but they both sound wrong. And dammit, I still think "incongruous" should be pronounced with the accent on the third syllable, not the second.

What words do you have in your vocabulary but not necessarily with the correct pronunciation?

Obama Yo-yos

Obama Yo-yos
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

I want one. If anyone can get me one they'd have my eternal gratitude. I bet they're already showing up on ebay...

UPDATE: Nope. No returns on ebay searching for "Obama yo-yo". And searching The Google for those terms is not very helpful, as Yo-Yo Ma is playing at one of Obama's inauguration events. Getting slightly more clever yields this yo-yo,but is sadly out of stock. I want a commemorative yo-yo from the district, anyway. I want a piece of kitsch with a story, not some stupid barely usable yo-yo ordered from the interwebs.

Good news, though. My agent in DC is keeping a sharp lookout for one for me. Said agent once borrowed one of my yo-yos and showed me a trick where the yo-yo ends up in the mint julep I'm holding. It's a good trick for whenever I happen to be holding a mint julep, which is not nearly often enough.

T in Tanzania

T in Tanzania(Click for full set)

The Perfect Thew Device

Such was the subject line on a missive that arrived in my inbox today from my long-time friend and illustrious creator of Big Trendy. Contained therein was a link: http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/10/06/iyo-induction-iphone-charger/, with accompanying text "this is my submission for the perfect piece of Thew technology."

Ok. You win. This is almost enough to make me want to buy an apple product. I'm not a big fan of apple. Their closed DRM is worse than all the evils of Sony and Microsoft combined. But being able to charge my iphone with a yo-yo!? That would be the ultimate in geek awesomeness. Now if only someone would invent a yo-yo powered bicycle...

Thanksgiving

Many, many years ago I visited my cousin Sea_Pea_Tea when he was still a student at Central Michigan University. I remember fondly him taking me on a tour of the greenhouse on campus where he was employed, I believe in an arrangement with the program in which he was studying, but I could be misremembering. I'm not sure if I had ever seen a banana tree before, but I was certainly wowed by the size of the leaves on the banana tree in that greenhouse. I also remember, in the style of two college students who were both into music, sharing a few cd's with each other at his place. One of the bands he introduced to me then was a group called Poi Dog Pondering, and their album "Wishing like a mountain and thinking like the sea". A collection of wistfully upbeat chamber rock songs, the album didn't immediately grab my attention. But through a few repeated listenings, the poetry of one particular song started to speak to me. The track is called "Thanksgiving", and while the words really deserve the music, and vice versa, I'd like to share the lyrics with you here. They exhibit a certain turn of phrase that I came to find quite beautful, and poignant.

Somehow I find myself far out of line
from the ones I had drawn
Wasn't the best of paths, you could attest to that,
but I'm keeping on.
Would our paths cross if every great loss
had turned out our gain?
Would our paths cross if the pain it had cost us
was paid in vain?

There was no pot of gold, hardly a rainbow
lighting my way
But I will be true to the red, black and blues
that colored those days.

I owe my soul to each fork in the road,
each misleading sign.
'Cause even in solitude, no bitter attitude
can dissolve my sweetest find

Thanksgiving for every wrong move that made it right

As an aside, I later found out that the father of the lead singer worked as a solar physicist at the solar observatory in Hawaii. Thus the bands name involving Poi, the sometimes Hawaiian themed instrumentation, and a particular song on one album called "Circle round the sun". I found this out because my supervisor at the Naval Research Lab, when I worked there during an internship during college, worked with this particular solar physicist at one point previously. Would our paths cross, indeed.

Ok, Seattle is pretty awesome after all

Yesterday I went to the Science Fiction Museum at Seattle Center. My friends had a birthday party to bring their six-year-old to at the Children's Museum there. So while the six-year-old was having a good time at the party, her father and I tried to get what we could out of the sci-fi museum before it closed in a little over an hour. This is the guy that goes by Centauri on message boards and stuff, so you know he's gonna be into it. The museum is not large, but it does have some pretty cool exhibits. One of my favorite items was the original paper manuscript of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. He writes his novels out by hand on paper using an old-fashioned pen that he dips in ink. Crazy-awesome, but still crazy. And each of the three volumes of the Baroque Cycle are approximately 900 pages, so writing that all out by hand is quite the stack of paper. Neal Stephenson was mentioned in several sections, including his novel Diamond Age in a small section on Nanotechnology. My other favorite piece there was old school Centurion from the original Battlestar Galactica. The museum needed more Firefly stuff, though. As in it needed something, anything, from Firefly.

After visiting the museum and killing some time by climbing a climbing wall at the arcade we picked up the six-year-old and the six-year-old's mom and the six-year-old's sister and walked around amongst the lights and the snow. Yes, snow. The trees were all decorated with christmas lights and there was a carousel and the snow was coming down pretty well. It was magical.

Denver is still cooler than Seattle

About a year ago I went to a charity fund raiser for Child's Play called Funde Razor, but with rocknroll umlauts and stuff. I have a blog post about it and everything. It was awesome. Well, on wednesday I went to the Seattle version of basically the same thing, only here it's called Pinkapalooza. Maybe it was because when I went to the one in Denver I had with me such good comrades, but I have to say that Denver knows how to party better than Seattle does. The crowd in Denver was amazing. Lots of people all very enthusiastic about every band that went up. Huge line of people waiting to go on stage. The one here in Seattle was mellow by comparison. Not a big crowd. Mostly not interested. The people that got together to form bands were in general pretty awesome, though. Lots of them dressed up in themes or had various bits of rocknroll attire on. And you could tell they had been practicing "their song" for the show. But the energy of the place just wasn't the same. The highlight, for me, was when the boys from Harmonix got up on stage to jam joined by Wil Wheaton. That was awesome.